Cluj Cultural Centre

This project was implemented by Cluj Cultural Centre in Cluj-Napoca, Romania in partnership with the World Health Organisation and University College London.
The goal of this pilot project was to explore to what extent Music and Motherhood, a clinically effective group singing intervention for new mums in the UK, had to be adapted to meet local needs, thus investigating the feasibility of implementation and its impact on the mental health and well-being of participants in Romania and Denmark.
Group singing for maternal mental health aims to help alleviate depression symptoms, supporting participants in transforming negative emotions and negative self-perception, to experience positive emotions, support cathartic release, gather peer support, and reinforce mother-infant bonding. Mothers attend these sessions together with their babies and get to share experiences and receive support from the group, sing, and engage in simple music-making activities under the facilitation of a music lead.
In Cluj-Napoca, the research project involved two groups. Two singing groups were organised, one for Romanian-speaking mothers and another one for Hungarian-speaking mothers. In total,15 new Romanian and Hungarian-speaking mothers experiencing postpartum depression symptoms participated in a 10-week group singing intervention facilitated by professional singing leaders.
The pilot involved a complex preparation, including a detailed design of the intervention and evaluation protocol; an ethical validation of the research protocol by the Babeș-Bolyai University and the WHO IRB/ethics committees; a process of consultation on the project design with public health experts, artists, psychologists and mothers who have previously experienced PPD; and conversations and cooperation meetings with a number of local stakeholders such as representatives of general physicians, private and public health institutions, psychology and mental health associations, cultural organisations, media, parents’ groups, and other interested parts.
With the aim to test the impact on different contexts, the intervention was piloted also in Denmark and Italy, by local organisations. The results show in all cases positive benefits for the beneficiaries.

The art and well-being space it is a space created through a long term co-creation process that took place in several stages involving the school community - teachers, students, parents - alongside with artists, designers, architects, landscapers, researchers in psychology and public health. The participatory process was facilitated, under the coordination of the Cluj Cultural Centre, by a multidisciplinary team from Urban Scale Interventions (UK), specialized in urban innovation projects focused on community, culture and well-being. The space was designed to stimulate the emotional and cognitive development of children through art, play and sensory exploration. The initiative of the space is part of the Art & Well-being European project and the Learning QUB program.

Cluj Cultural Centre proposed a pilot project - Culture Pill for Well-being – an online platform that assesses the emotional state and offers customized cultural recommendations. The recommendations selected by a team of curators were adapted to the emotional states of the participants and included music, literature, film, visual arts and theatre. This programme also aimed to measure the impact of the cultural recommendations on people’s emotional states.
From October to December 2021, through online communication actions, people were encouraged to access the platform and to fill in the online form in order to receive customized cultural recommendations by email. During this period, 1200 people accessed the platform and 599 enthusiasts filled in the form and received specific cultural content to be consumed. At the end of this period, all participants received another online form which evaluated their state and emotions after the consumption, and also investigated the relevance of the cultural content and future directions for platform development. The post consumption form was filled in by 64 participants who initially engaged in the programme.

The forum offers the opportunity to present best practices, discuss and share experiences among practitioners, and engage in dialogue with experts and decision makers about institutional collaborations and support structures needed to scale up cultural well-being projects and interventions. The Culture and Well-being Forum was initiated by the Cluj Cultural Centre in 2018. The 2021 edition of the Forum was organised within the Art & Well-being European project and included conference panels and inspirational talks, case studies, workshops, policy discussions and an artistic programme.

During the autumn of 2020, the Cluj Cultural Centre implemented a pilot project consisting in a cultural initiative oriented towards reducing the symptoms of burnout in a group of 11 people, offering participation in a series of specially designed creative workshops to this group of people with burnout symptoms. Developed in co-design process and built on practical exercises using various artistic techniques, the workshops contributed to the development of imagination and emotional intelligence, stimulated the ability to express, reduced anxiety and cultivated self-esteem with the final purpose to help people overcome their burnout with time.